Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/04/carbon-dioxide-shortage.html
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Brace yourselves for the approaching antipandemic of health.
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It will be profoundly silly when scientists employed by Coca Cola and the diabetes drug manufacturers manage to invent a reliable way to extract excess CO2 from the atmosphere.
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Randall Munroe discussed storing the world’s excess CO2 in pop cans. It would take a lot.
But on the flip other hand, that means any carbon capture scheme they’re trying must be making orders of magnitude more than we need, right? Otherwise it would just be for show… 
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We’ve had a few of these shortages in the UK over the past few years which have affected everything from soft drinks to meat production. They’ve been down to problems in the fertiliser industry either due to plant maintenance or reduced output because of the high price of natural gas which is the main feedstock.
It’d be nice to have a more sustainable supply of CO2, but right now, as a waste product of an industry that keeps a quarter of the world’s population alive, the price of fossil CO2 is hard to beat.
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Just substitute carbon monoxide.
“You’ve tried Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero, but have you tried Coke Evil?”
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Is that before or after you count the people it is currently killing? Because that number’s going to keep going up a lot. It seems very strange to talk about the companies who have been doing more to destroy our world, politically and environmentally, than anyone else as if they were heroes.
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That chap thinks of all my brilliant* ideas and debunks them well before I get around to thinking of them. Maybe the fine folks at Coca Cola and Pfizer can invent a soda-based distribution system that doesn’t involve temporary storage of the soda but rather an on-demand soda administration system that we draw from freely. Like a soda aquifer that sequesters the bubbly beverage underground until we turn on our taps or flush our toilets. They could consult with the makers of Brawndo on the specifics.
*silly
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Vinegar and baking soda. Works like a charm.
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I mean… if Germany and Belgium can get beer plumbed across town from the brewery then soda on tap isn’t as crazy as one would think.
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Looks like it costs somewhere beween $600-$1,000 per ton to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Current cost is about $50/ton, at least here in the US where we don’t appear to have a shortage. How about making up the difference via taxation, at least for applications like soda where the CO2 is just released to the atmosphere? That’ll drive innovation pretty hard.
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Is here where I suggest a tax on burping?
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If it helps, this time it was apparently Brandon Seah who thought of it. 
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Burping? Breathing! Put a meter on every orifice and set up automatic wireless billing, just like the electricity meter at home.
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“Gaswolrd”… A publication dedicated to the 24 square feet between my sheets.
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At the moment, the Haber-Bosch process is essential to keep billions of humans alive. 50% of the nitrogen in the average human body has been produced by it.
And yes, it uses about 5% of the world’s natural gas consumption to do so. There are other routes to source Ammonia and Hydrogen, but until they’re deployed at scale and powered by renewables, then this particular fossil fuel use is feeding us all.
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But of course most things aren’t powered by renewables at scale because the fossil fuel industry worked hard to prevent those. This is like crediting Eli Lilly for the insulin people need to survive – it’s technically true but in a way that badly distorts the bigger picture. At best you could call it a protection racket, but it’s one that is also destroying the other things we need for it to matter.
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